Abstract
Ecological restoration of mine tailings have impact on soil physiochemical properties and microbial communities. The surface soil has been a primary concern in the past decades, however it remains poorly understood about the adaptive response of microbial communities along the profile during ecological restoration of the tailings. In this study, microbial communities along a 60-cm profile were investigated in a mine tailing pond during ecological restoration of the bare waste tailings (BW) with two vegetated soils of Imperata cylindrica (IC) and Chrysopogon zizanioides (CZ) plants. Revegetation of both IC and CZ could retard soil degradation of mine tailing by stimulation of soil pH at 0–30 cm soils and altered the bacterial communities at 0–20 cm depths of the mine tailings. Significant differences existed in the relative abundance of the phyla Alphaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Firmicutes and Nitrospira. Slight difference of bacterial communities were found at 30–60 cm depths of mine tailings. Abundance and activity analysis of nifH genes also explained the elevated soil nitrogen contents at the surface 0–20 cm of the vegetated soils. These results suggest that microbial succession occurred primarily at surface tailings and vegetation of pioneering plants might have promoted ecological restoration of mine tailings.
Highlights
Ecological restoration of mine tailings have impact on soil physiochemical properties and microbial communities
Revegetation has been widely exploited to control environmental hazards associated with mine tailings containing polymetallic sulfides because plant community development can effectively increase the content of organic matter[1,2,3,4,5] and nutrients in the tailings[4,6,7,8]; plant community development is likely to inhibit the oxidation of polymetallic sulfides in tailings[9,10]
Many investigations have been conducted on changes in the structure, composition and diversity of microbial communities during revegetation using methods based on molecular biology[1,2,21,22], phospholipid fatty acids (PLFAs)[3,11,23], community-level physiological profiles (CLPPs)[18], etc., the current knowledge on the relationship between plants and soil microorganisms is still superficial due to limitations in these research methods
Summary
Ecological restoration of mine tailings have impact on soil physiochemical properties and microbial communities. Microbial communities along a 60-cm profile were investigated in a mine tailing pond during ecological restoration of the bare waste tailings (BW) with two vegetated soils of Imperata cylindrica (IC) and Chrysopogon zizanioides (CZ) plants. Revegetation of both IC and CZ could retard soil degradation of mine tailing by stimulation of soil pH at 0–30 cm soils and altered the bacterial communities at 0–20 cm depths of the mine tailings. The objective of this study was to investigate the response of the bacterial community structure to plant species on profiles and to identify the factors controlling the structure of the bacterial community
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